06/13/2026
When people think of archives, they often imagine administrative records, old photographs, or historical documents. Yet among the thousands of items preserved at the Bohdan Medwidsky Ukrainian Folklore Archives (BMUFA), there are also unexpected treasures that continue to surprise researchers.
One such treasure is a small portion of the archive of Ukrainian poet, literary scholar, and public intellectual Yar Slavutych, transferred to the BMUFA as part of the collections of the Ukrainian Canadian Archives and Museum of Alberta (UCAMA). Although it occupies only two archival boxes, its contents are extraordinary. The collection contains autographs, manuscripts, typescripts with authors’ corrections, and letters by prominent Ukrainian and Belarusian authors from the 1920s to the 1940s, including Valeriian Pidmohylny and Yevhen Pluzhnyk. Many of these writers were persecuted during the Soviet era, and only fragments of their personal archives have survived.
Another fascinating story concerns the artist Lev (Leon) Getz, one of the most important Ukrainian painters active in interwar Poland, who continued his artistic career after the Second World War. He faced considerable political and personal challenges throughout his life. Near the end, portions of his archive were entrusted to Harry (Hryhory) Yopyk, co-founder of UCAMA, and eventually became part of the BMUFA collections. Today, Getz’s archival legacy is dispersed across several countries and institutions, making every surviving document especially valuable. Recently, a researcher from the University of Warsaw, who has spent years studying Lev Getz and working with archival sources, learned that our Medwidsky Archives hold additional materials related to the artist. She described the discovery as “entirely new information” and “an important contribution to the existing body of knowledge about his life and work.”
Stories like these remind us that archives are much more than repositories of the past. They are places of discovery, where even a single archival box can reveal forgotten connections, preserve endangered cultural heritage, and open new paths for research.
